Step 6: Assemble!

Step 7: Blinkup and Planner

Time to set up the software and get your joystick connected to the internet. First, we need to get your imp connected to your network and visible in p...

Last week, I posted a demo on building impBot, a simple pan/tilt servo "robot" controlled via the internet with the electric imp. At the time, all I had for controlling said robot was a potentiometer in a box, which made the overall usefulness a little underwhelming. This week, I've got a demo on how to build a better way to control the impBot (or just about anything else, for that matter) by creating an internet-connected joystick using one of Sparkfun's thumb joysticks.

These thumb joysticks are wonderfully simple, and have a select button along with the X and Y axis outputs; they're just like the analog controls on your playstation controller (quite possibly the exact same part, actually). Fully interfacing to one with the imp takes just three signal wires (X, Y, Button), 3.3V from the Electric Imp Breakout Board's regulator, and ground: 5 wires. The hardest part about the whole thing is just getting the whole apparatus packed up attractively in a box.

Once you've got this project all set up, you've got an internet-connected X-Y control with a select button - twice as powerful as the controlBox + a button!

Fixed now. Do take note: this project uses the old Blueprint environment, but this has now been deprecated in favor of the shiny new API and the powerful new "Agents" feature. Check out the blog post on both here: http://blog.electricimp.com/post/64145825282/electric-imp-rolls-out-agents-to-expand-your-devices

Hopefully, you can show me how to let my PC control this remote controlled lawnmower: http://www.instructables.com/id/Remote-Controlled-Lawnmower/

The above web site has a video of my remote controlled lawnmower.

Currently, the mower is controlled by a Futaba 4YF transmitter. I want my Windows 7 PC to control the mower either with an interface to the Futaba transmitter or by a PC based joystick and transmitter that replaces the Futaba transmitter. The interface needs to allow the following 2 steps:

Step #1-Learn Mode Control the mower via the transmitter and record the sequence of joystick commands to the PC